As Josh and I sat on the terrace that night, the drumming of the local musicians was so strong that it resonated through our chests, rhythmic and hypnotic. The Auberge Tombouctou, an inn set against a backdrop of orange dunes that are the tallest in Morocco, is a popular stop for trekkers getting their first taste of the Sahara Desert. The Algerian desert has never been a hospitable place but was then, and still is now, truly off-limits because of internal and international political disputes and a dangerous proliferation of machete-wielding bandits and rebels with guns and four-wheel-drives. Merzouga, which was once a stop for caravans, is hemmed in and subsists primarily on a few small herds of camels and goats, a rug shop belonging to a gregarious and photogenic merchant named Brahim Karaoui, and the inns and guide services used by trekkers and the occasional movie crew.

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 -- From “Heeding the Call: Out of the blue, a near-stranger phones to warn of an imminent terrorist attack. What’s your next move?” by Alan Huffman; © 2004, The Washington Post